{"id":2821,"date":"2004-09-24T04:19:47","date_gmt":"2004-09-24T18:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/09\/24\/politicizing-warfare\/"},"modified":"2019-12-11T09:14:46","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T17:14:46","slug":"politicizing-warfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/09\/24\/politicizing-warfare\/","title":{"rendered":"Politicizing Warfare"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:10182,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\\\/archives\\\/individual\\\/2004_09\\\/004763.php&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\\\/archives\\\/individual\\\/2004_09\\\/004763.php&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:10183,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/atrios.blogspot.com\\\/2004\\\/09\\\/pay-attention-to-what-he-does-not-what.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/atrios.blogspot.com\\\/2004\\\/09\\\/pay-attention-to-what-he-does-not-what.html&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>The Washington Monthly is asking about the fantasyland that George Bush seems to be living in, when waging a war in which the strategy seems to be based not on any real situations, but on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\/archives\/individual\/2004_09\/004763.php\" title=\"PLAN E\">election-year political situations<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  &#91;Our upcoming&#93; election, and the political considerations that go along with it, have been driving our military strategy for the past two years. Before the war, we passed up a chance to take out terrorist mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi &#8212; for political reasons. We invaded with too few troops &#8212; for political reasons. We lowballed the cost of the war &#8212; for political reasons. We ignored the UN and then turned around and pleaded for their help &#8212; for political reasons. Then we installed Iyad Allawi as president behind the UN&#8217;s back &#8212; for political reasons.<\/p>\n<p>  And just recently we&#8217;ve learned that the Marines were yo-yoed in and out of Fallujah &#8212; for political reasons. The president has bizarrely dismissed his own intelligence agencies&#8217; analysis of Iraq as &#8220;guessing&#8221; &#8212; for political reasons. He&#8217;s ignored the advice of his own generals about troop requirements for the upcoming &#91;Iraqi&#93; elections &#8212; for political reasons. And assaults on Baathist enclaves have been postponed until December &#8212; for fairly obvious political reasons.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And things just keep going downhill.<\/p>\n<p>(via <a href=\"http:\/\/atrios.blogspot.com\/2004\/09\/pay-attention-to-what-he-does-not-what.html\" title=\"Pay Attention to What He Does, Not What He Says\">Atrios<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Washington Monthly is asking about the fantasyland that George Bush seems to be living in, when waging a war in which the strategy seems to be based not on any real situations, but on election-year political situations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2042],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-2821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}